It just means it's still in combat. When it eliminates the unit, that graphic disappears. Seeing how other things are going, it will probably require a code revamp of "animations".

It is an indicator that your unit was damaged and is/was taking damage during the combat tick.

We have a task to lower this cause it’s confusing: so how long would you like to see the damage? I was proposing for a few minutes eg. 10 after damage event to allow for visibility.

After a 10 player battle in Europe recently, I thought I was going to go into convulsions from the arty/plane/territory animations.

haha - yeah. Just come forward with some timers. Observe in game what you think would make sense and propose it - I'm glad to give it a try here in the studio.

From my own games I am mostly annoyed by the aircraft explosions - so I was thinking about something like 10 or 15 minutes.

That way there is a "damage" anim of sorts (we couldn't include a smoke trail unfortunately) which would end upon RTB mostly or at least when out of the combat zone.

15 minutes should be enough. Most of reports i got about that were panicked players not understanding why their plane was "exploding" on the ground

So are their two types of "damage" animations? 1 ground 1 air? There is the arty blanket explosions, then exploding air ones. If you have the air units smoke like the low morale cities (except a horizontal smoke cloud) that would last 15 minutes would be good.